Date: Friday, June 27, 2025
Hello. We are two of the Junior Editors for New Directions for Evaluation (NDE). I (Naomi Stephen) am a doctoral student in the Social Research Methodology program at University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA). And, I (Tanushree Banerjee) am a doctoral student in the Research, Assessment and Evaluation program at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU).
Recognizing that social media is an important tool to access information, building NDE’s social media presence was a must. In this blog, we share hot tips, lessons learned, and rad resources based on our experience that we also think might be helpful for others wanting to build their online presence.
We use Canva, a free design app which provides a platform to create graphics for social media. We built NDE branding by creating different template designs in Canva that can be used to maintain consistency and sustainability. For the template design, we chose color palettes, fonts and used accessibility checkers to make sure that our media could be widely viewed. Designing the templates in Canva allowed us to focus more on the content of each post, rather than worrying about the design of each individual post.
We promote content on social media outlets, mainly through NDE LinkedIn page. We tried other social media sites in the beginning, but they did not gain as many followers as our LinkedIn page. So, we have prioritized LinkedIn.
If you are trying to increase your social media engagement, we suggest you plan ahead! Before we started our NDE page, we brainstormed posts we wanted, assigned responsibilities, and organized a schedule. Once our social media launched, we had a sustainable plan that could be followed to keep it up. We also were able to prepare for how much time we would need to spend to best cater to our schedules.
We also have a post schedule. The infographics created in Canva are posted under the following categories: Mini-mics Monday, Takeover Tuesday, Throwback Thursday, or other Announcement/Highlight posts (posted on other days). The posts we create engage evaluation scholars, practitioners, other members of the evaluation community, and others who follow our page. For example, we:
We have learned great lessons that can help others as they build a social media presence:
The American Evaluation Association is hosting New Directions for Evaluation (NDE). The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from the NDE team. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the AEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an AEA365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to AEA365@eval.org. AEA365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.